I read about everything I could with regard to the cooling shrouds and their shapes. I really wanted one that looked similar to either a 911 or better still, the Carrera 4 cam. I even bought one shroud off of the SAMBA which just plane didn't fit the VW 1776, but now looks great atop my mailbox.
For cooling information Jake has gone to great lengths and he believed in the DTM enough to revitalize its design. John at JPS has used a cute centered-looking unit on a lot of his builds and I haven't read where anyone bit the big one as a result.
For a 1776 a dog house is fine. It served a gazillion VWs before us! A DTM, in my opinion does work better than a dog house, but you only need so much cooling. There is merit to the cooling distribution with the DTM which is better than a dog house and better than the center-hump unit.
Yes, I have a DTM and yes it fits in my engine bay. The hose at the top gets crunched a little and that is an aesthetic thing, not a performance bug-a-boo. But then I have a little more cooling need and demand and I trusted the engine's builder with the list of required ancillary cooling things to keep my engine happy...
Placement of the oil cooler and I assume accompanying fan? I placed mine up behind the firewall in the space between the firewall and back of the backseat. It stays clean, can be accessed OK and doesn't create any lower point of conflicts with speedbumps, etc.
A neat look I am investigating for my next build is to have it upfront with lines running to the back of the car. My 930 had this and in pictures of 356 Carrera GTs and GSs, you'll see the two lines in the front right wheel well. Not an original idea, but one that seems to work when planned for in the initial stages of a build.